Jeff Allred (he/him/his) on Just thought I’d post this going on our discussion on Mulvey! This article shows the number about the inequality of men and women in film! Something to think about.
Jeff Allred (he/him/his) on Laura Mulvey: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
What is Scopophilia? In short, it is pleasure in looking. Mulvey uses Freud as her vehicle to explain his theory of scopophilia to further progress how scopophilia affects women: “..Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the compenent instincts of sexuality which exist as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones… Although the instinct is modified by other factors, inparticular the constitution of the ego, it continues to exist as the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object. At the extreme, it can become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms whose onlu sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, and objectified other” (Mulvey 2086). Mulvey uses Freud’s point of scopophilia, being the pleasure of looking at others for satisfaction, to argue that women in movies have become the object to look at for pleasure.
Is this point always true? In terms of the “peeping tom” I would have to agree. Peeping toms are mainly known to be committed by men, having the woman become the object. I think nowadays however, movies such as Magic Mike cast the male as the ‘eye candy’, or object to be looked at for pleasure. Channing Tatum stars in a movie that reflects his actual life as a stripper, while it is a fun comedy movie, we can see that the character Tatum plays is for sexual pleasure. Mulvery creates a great point that scopophilia occurs when watching a movie and that it can be transformed into objectifying women, but it can also happen to males as well. Although Mulvery does not say it can’t be possible for males, we can assume from her point that the main characters subjected in cinema are women.
What is her intention for this essay? The title of section B is “Destruction of Pleasure as a Radical Weapon” I think this title is overdramatic, it’s a great title to capture the audience’s attention but it does not catch the exact intention of her essay. Destroy is not the correct word, I think she intends to bring attention to how cinema perpetuates patriarchy by objecting the female and making her our pleasure of looking (active scopophilia). “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen” (Mulvey 2089). She also mentions how the male character in a movie is the protagonist that advance the story while the female character is “his screen surrogate” (Mulvey 2089). The female becomes sexualized in the movie, making her the object of desire, but once she falls in love with the male protagonist her sexuality belongs to him and only him. This act exemplifies how women are expected to belong to a male.
This essay reminds me of a TED talks video, where Colin Stokes argues that movies nowadays perpetuate masculinity by making the female character the person in need of saving and the prize to be claimed while the male character is the one who must do good to claim their prize and be the hero. He presented facts on sexual assaults (1/5 women in America have been sexuality assaulted), saying that it had nothing to do with pornography, but more to do with the movies we show younger kids. He raised the point saying that if 1/5 women in America are being sexuality assaulted, then there must be a lot of sexual assailants out there. His main question was “What are children’s movies teaching our kids?” and “Is girl power enough to prepare our daughters when we are simultaneously training our sons to maintain their boy power?” I think movies are one of the perfect ways to show hidden messages of patriarchy because not everyone would be able to notice the underlying messages, nor would much of the audience pay attention to it. I think we also must take into account who holds the leadership roles behind the camera, and according to ABC, it is still males. “The study looked beyond just on-camera roles, also finding that only 8 percent of directors, 13.6 percent of writers and 19.1 percent of producers were female.” (ABC news) Until the numbers change, we can only to see slow and steady progress and hope for it to change.
